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Comment by reedF211 | Hacker News Reader

$100K that's utter bs. Anecdotes mean squat. Most CS graduates start at around 45-50k. Suggesting that even a a sizeable minority makes 100k out of college is being ill-informed at best and dishonest at worst. If we are talking in terms of anecdotes, I know several history majors making good money working for the city whereas some new CS majors are still working at bestbuy.

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For Stanford CS grads, it's anything but BS. From what I've heard (being at Stanford), it's usually somewhere around $80 - $120.

Google, for example, pays $8,000 a month - just for interns!

Here's the nationwide average http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Degree=Bachelor_of_Scien... .The average pay for a senior software engineer is 77-101k. Hardly the 80k norm for fresh grads that the OP is suggesting. It might be the case at Stanford(although I'd need to see statistics before I concede that) but the op's explanation for the trend mentioned in the article was a broad indictment non-cs majors rather than it being specific to the culture at stanford. Google Pays $8000 a month interns? They hire co-op students out of my school $14,000 for the entire 4 month term which comes out to about 3500 a month.

Google, for example, pays $8,000 a month - just for interns!

Do you have a source for this? That seems exceedingly high. And even higher on an annual basis that the entry level salary you're mentioning.

Though I could see how paying a few extra thousands could help convince a college grad to take an internship there. Google then has their foot in the door… (but still, it would be odd to then get an offer for less than what you were making as an intern)

Also, these salary threads from the past couple of days make me feel underpaid.

I'm graduating from Stanford with a BS in CS this year and I'm interning at Google this summer, and I'm being paid less than $8000/month. I've also been told that I'm being paid a "master's intern" rate, so presumably interns who haven't completed their bachelor's are being paid less. That said, Google's intern salaries are extremely generous (just not $8000/month generous).

Also, the Stanford CS department conducts a salary survey of graduates every year, and for 2009-2010 the average salary offer for CS/EE undergrads was $79,333 and the median was $80,0000.

I do have a source for this, I saw the offer myself. I was also told that this is given to all interns, no matter what department. That being said, maybe this applied only to grad interns - maybe undergraduates get less.

Where are the 80k$-120k$ offers coming from, geographically? The reason I ask is that 80k in S.F. is roughly... 50k in Austin, TX. 120k in S.F. is roughly equivalent to 70k in Austin. (Based on Salary.com's cost of living calculator.) 50-70k is probably a nice starting salary in Austin, but not exactly mind-blowing, imho.

80-120 is the case in at least New York, SF, SV, and Seattle/Redmond.

It's Stanford.

You can have a look at stats of Cornell CS grads: http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/resources/career_services...

The median was ~ 75K in 2009

Here are the stats for Stanford: http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/cdc/jobs/salary-grads

Reading this thread and the other salary thread I have noticed a disturbing trend among developers i.e the amount of greed. It seems that a lot of developers are motivated by finances rather than pure reasons of love of programming. msluyter's post exemplifies this perfectly. In what universe is 50-70k not mindblowing for a fresh grad? That is more money than enough money to live comfortably in most places in North-America. I'm not graduated yet but just last summer I worked for this company making 3k a month for the entire summer (36k for the year) and I had more money than I knew what to do with. Here's my expenditures:

After taxes and other deductions I took approx 2200/month. $475/ month for rent living with a roommate. $55 for internet. ~$50 for monthly bus pass. $150/month for food. $100-150 miscellaneous utilities. All in that's about $880 a month for essentials. That left me with $1320 a month spending money. I bought video games, went to movies etc and still had a lot of spare cash. This with co-op pay of 3k a month. I cannot see a reason how anyone can say that 50-70k is not enough, except greed run amok.

It's not greed, it's lifestyle inflation from being a grown up, combined with location. You are a student, you don't have a family or a car, and you can tolerate living with room mates outside of a major city. That's a totally different situation.

A 1br apartment in SF in a part of town where you don't have to step over human excrement on a daily basis is $1800-$2000. Add another $500 for a new building (the one I live in is 100 years old). A new-ish car payment is $500 + expensive insurance. Add your $400 or so for food + utilities and your starting burn rate here just as a single guy is much closer to 3k per month, let alone what it costs to have a family. Also, $5 a day for food? Really? Around here lunch is $10.

Just saying, I don't think it's greed.

And don't forget all those graduating with massive student debt. If you have to pay back $100K plus or minus....

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